Dear
Mark,
What's the longest winning streak you have ever witnessed
in gambling? Mary Ann G.
A
REAL FUN question, Mary Ann, which gets into gear a
few lines down, where you'll also read about the longest
losing streak I've ever witnessed. A streak is nothing
more than a welcome (welcome to one side, that is, unwelcome
to the other), momentary flutter in an endless time-line,
which will soon be balanced by one or more unwelcome
flutters.
As for streaks observed, I once dealt a lady 32 straight
winning hands in blackjack. I tried like the dickens
to get her to progressively bet more,
but she took her $64
(32X$2) after the run ended and walked away a happy
camper, with a yarn and a smile for a lifetime.
I myself once had a horse in the money in 17 consecutive
races over two days at Pimlico, offset by not having
a horse crossing the line for cash
for the next 35 races. See why the gods of chance
are always shown grinning?
But the most superlative streak belongs to Kimmy
T. from Traverse City, Michigan, who accumulated
47 winning sessions in a row in a casino.
Yes, readers, don't let your eyes deceive you, you're
reading it right. As an eyewitness at both the Leelanau
Sands and the Turtle Creek Casino,
I observed or documented Kimmy briefly tossing the
odds into a cocked hat. She started her run nine
months ago when she, her husband, my
wife, my father and I hit the Leelanau Sands for
an afternoon of leisurely gambling. (All right,
coming clean here, I was there specifically for
the
$2.99 lunch buffet -- a little vacation from my
uxorially imposed diet).
Her eventual gambling timeline, 47 consecutive visits
to the casino and coming out a winner each time,
is still within the breeding grounds for
unusual fluctuations, where -- briefly -- results
seem to defy the dictates of probability. The casino's
built-in advantage on the games she played
didn't hold during her brief gaming stints. She
made her gambling timeline as short as possible,
always beginning with a bankroll of $80, walking
away with as little as a $20 profit in 10 minutes,
or as much as $1,150 in a two-hour period.
Kimmy's games of choice were but three: Double zero
roulette, where the house edge is 5.26% on all the
wagers she made; Three card poker
with a simple basic strategy she learned from this
column, which lowered the house edge on the "ante"
wager to about 2.1%; and the "Pair plus"
bet slightly higher at 2.3%; and, dare I say it,
$1 SLOTS. The casino advantage on one-armed bandits
in Michigan is, the envelope please,
UNKNOWN.
Though many state gaming regulatory or tax agencies
publicize casino slot returns for their respected
jurisdictions, Michigan casinos are not
required by law to release information on their
slot machine payback percentages. All the Michigan
casino must do is meet the same standards
for machines as in New Jersey or Nevada. In New
Jersey, the minimum return is 83 percent, Nevada
it's 75 percent. Thus, Michigan casinos must return
at least 75 percent to comply with the law
.
Yet, the casino edge for slot machines, and for
that matter for all casino games is based on long-term
trials. Casinos are open 24 hours a day,
greeting with a big smile those millions of handle
pulls. With thousands of hopefuls playing Kimmy's
games of choice, slots, double zero roulette,
and three-card poker at any given moment, and with
a mathematical advantage to the casino in every
one of them, the casino doesn't lose,
unless a godsend anomaly occurs, as it did for her.
Have faith, Mary Ann, in the casino's advantage
being quite real, but predicated on the operation
of the "law of averages" over a long period.
By
exposing your money for an extended period, you
veer unavoidably closer to the ultimate built-in
loss that the casino's statistician has prepared
for you. Brevity of a gambling session is, for that
reason, the secret weapon Kimmy employed.
Unfortunately, most players lengthen their bankroll's
exposure and give the casino a correspondingly greater
opportunity to eat it, whereas
Kimmy, shortened her playing time to as little as
10 minutes, giving her a chance to exploit any favorable
deviations from the law of big numbers
that may occur
.
Her hit-and-run method won't guarantee you will
be a winner or ever have a run of luck such as Kimmy
had, but magical gambling moments do
happen, and your hand-to-hand encounter with destiny
could begin today. You too, Mary Ann, could be walking
around lucky and not even know
it.
Before I shuffle: Incidentally, the steak did end
at 47, but as I write this, I just got a call from
Kimmy. She's in Vegas and up over $600 on her first
day.
